Bible's Influence on English

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:29 PM +0200 4/7/01, Grant Barrett wrote:
>An interesting review of two new books in today's New York Times
>concerned with the
>impact of mass-produced, vernacular Bibles and their impact on
>language and politics.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/08/reviews/010408.08winchet.html
>
>"The biblical impact on the language is the easier of the two cases
>to make and to
>observe, as McGrath demonstrates with an admirable clarity. So many
>modern idioms have
>biblical and most cases Hebrew origins -- ''sour grapes,'' ''for
>ever and ever,''
>''a broken reed,'' ''the land of the living,'' ''like a lamb to the
>slaughter'' -- that
>one might even accuse the Good Book of helping swell the merry band of modern
>English clichés. It seems fairly well established too that not a few
>words now in common
>use were created specifically for the Bible: ''nowadays'' was
>Wycliffe's, ''beautiful''
>comes essentially first from Tyndale (replacing the hitherto popular
>''belle'' and
>''faire''), while ''scapegoat,'' ''long-suffering'' and
>''peacemaker'' each first
>appeared in biblical translations too."
>
Note too that the review was written by Simon Winchester, the author
of The Professor and the Madman, no doubt the best-selling book ever
written about the OED.

larry
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